10 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You

A host of other studies on charter school outcomes
have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional
public schools, there are great charters and some that aren't so
great. There s a lot of variation within charter schools, points out
Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor of education at Montclair State
University who studies issues related to school governance. In fairness
to organizations that are running high-performing schools, many of them
are very frustrated with the range of quality, because they feel that
it taints charter schools as a whole, Bulkley says.

2. Our teachers aren t certified.According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics,
charter-school teachers are, on average, younger and less likely to hold
state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a
2000 survey, 92% of public school teachers held state certification,
compared to 79% of charter school teachers. A 2008 survey found that 32%
of charter school teachers were under 30, compared to 17% of
traditional public school teachers. Charter schools often recruit from
organizations like Teach for America that provide non-traditional paths
into the profession, and more-experienced teachers who already have jobs
in traditional public schools may have little incentive to give up the
protection of tenure.
Relying on relatively untrained, inexperienced staff may have a real
impact in the classroom. A lot of them don t have classroom management
skills, says May Taliaferrow, a charter-school parent.

3. Plus, they keep quitting.As many as one in four charter school teachers leave every year,
according to a 2007 study by Gary Miron, a professor of education at
Western Michigan University, and other researchers at the Great Lakes
Center for Education Research and Practice. That s about double the
typical teacher turnover rate in traditional public schools. Charter
schools typically pay teachers less than traditional public schools do,
and require longer hours, Miron says. Meanwhile, charter school
administrators earn more than their school-district counterparts, which
can also make teachers feel underpaid, he says. The odds of a teacher
leaving the profession altogether are 130% higher at charter schools
than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 study by the
National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University. That study
also found that much of this teacher attrition was related to
dissatisfaction with working conditions.
Higher turnover is inevitable with a younger staff and the ability
to get rid of ineffective teachers, says Peter Murphy, a spokesman for
the New York Charter Schools Association. There needs to be more
turnover in district schools, Murphy says. Instead, what you have is
this rigid tenure system where teachers are not held accountable, and
children suffer.

4. Students with disabilities need not apply.
Six-year-old Makala was throwing regular tantrums in school, so her
mother, Latrina Miley, took her for a psychiatric evaluation, eventually
ending up with a district-mandated plan that stated the girl should be
taught in a smaller class where half the students have special needs.
The charter school s response, Miley says, was to tell her she could
either change her daughter s educational plan, or change schools. She
moved Makala to a nearby public school where, she says, teachers have
been more effective at managing her daughter s behavior issues. The
school says it can t talk about specific cases.Critics say charter schools commonly counsel out children with
disabilities. While a few charter schools are specifically designed to
serve students with special needs, the rest tend to have lower
proportions of students with special needs than nearby public schools,
according to a review of multiple studies conducted by the University of
Colorado s Education and the Public Interest Center. Charter schools
also appear to end up with students whose disabilities are less
expensive to manage than those of public school students. A Boston
study, conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, found that
91% of students with disabilities in the city s charter schools were
able to be fully included in standard classrooms, compared to only 33%
of students with disabilities in the traditional public schools.

5. Separation of church and state? We found a loophole.Charter schools are public schools, supported by public tax dollars.
But among the thousands of charters nationwide are schools run by
Christian organizations as well as Hebrew and Arabic language academies
that blur the line between church and state. What would not be
tolerated in a regular public school seems to be tolerated when it s a
charter school, says Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New
York University and the author of The Death and Life of the Great
American School System. Even if these schools aren't explicitly
teaching religion, it s potentially segregation by religious
preference, Bulkley says.

6. We don t need to tell you where your tax dollars are going.
An investigation by Philadelphia s City Controller earlier this year
uncovered widespread financial mismanagement among the city s charter
schools, including undisclosed related party transactions where
friends and family of school management were paid for various services,
people listed as working full time at more than one school, individuals
writing checks to themselves, and even a $30,000 bill from a beach
resort charged to a school.Financial scandals have come to light in schools around the country,
but what s more troubling, says advocate Leonie Haimson of Class Size
Matters in New York City, is that charter schools have opposed state
audits of their finances. The New York Charter School Association won a
lawsuit against the state comptroller last year, with the court ruling
that the legislature had violated the state constitution when it
directed the comptroller to audit charter schools. Charter schools in
the state are already overseen and audited by at least two other
agencies, Murphy says. We have never objected to being audited, being
overseen, and being held accountable. In fact, this organization has
come out in favor of closing low-performing charter schools, he says.

7. We ll do anything to recruit more kids
Walking around New York City, it s impossible to miss the ads on
buses and subways for the Harlem Success academies, Haimson says. The
school is legally required to reach out to at-risk students, and it has
been opening new schools over the past couple of years. However, some
schools elsewhere have gone beyond marketing. A charter school in
Colorado gave out gift cards to families that recruited new students,
and another school in Louisiana gave out cash.

8. but we ll push them out if they don t perform.
The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools have been criticized
for high rates of student attrition, in part because it s the struggling
students who are more likely to leave schools mid-year so if more
students leave charters, that churn could boost a school's scores. A
KIPP study released in June found students leaving at rates comparable
to the rate at which students leave traditional public schools but,
according to Miron, that study ignored the fact that KIPP schools don t
then fill empty slots with other weak, transient students the way
traditional public schools do. Traditional public schools have to take
everybody, Miron explains. Charter schools can determine the number
they want to take and when they want to take them, and then they can
close the door.
Miron found there was a 19% drop in enrollment in KIPP schools from
grades 6 to 7, and a 24% drop from grades 7 to 8. Some charter schools
lose 50% of a cohort each year, Miron says. And in some cases, students
can be explicitly pushed out of a charter school for failing to meet the
school s academic or behavioral standards an option that s not
available to a traditional public school.

9. Success can be bought.Some of the most successful charter schools are also some of the
wealthiest. Harlem Children s Zone, for example, had over $193 million
in net assets at the end of the 2008-2009 school year, according to its
most recent IRS filing. The organization s charter schools spend $12,443
per student in public money and an additional $3,482 that comes from
private fundraising. That additional funding helps pay for 30% more time
in class, according to Marty Lipp, spokesman for the organization.It s great to see schools that have the resources to spend lavishly
to help children succeed, Bulkley says, but it's difficult to see how
those schools can then be models for traditional public schools largely
constrained by traditional public budgets. All schools should get what
they need, Lipp says, but adds, You give two people $10 and they spend
it different ways, so it s not simply about money.

10. Even great teachers can only do so much.
Much of the public debate over charter schools focuses on teacher
performance and the ability to fire ineffective teachers something
that s more difficult at a traditional public school where teachers are
typically union members. While it's true that teachers represent the
most important in-school factor affecting student performance,
out-of-school factors matter more, Ravitch says. The single biggest
predictor of student performance is family income, she says. I
certainly wish it were not so, but it is. Children from higher-income
families get a huge head start thanks to better nutrition, a larger
vocabulary spoken at home and other factors, she says. The narrative
that blames teachers for problems that are rooted in poverty is
demoralizing teachers by the thousands, Ravitch says. And you don t
improve education by demoralizing the people who have to do the work
every day.